Beyond the Edge
by adele4
Summary: Ficlet, J/E, W/E. "Meeting a real pirate does nothing to ease Elizabeth's fascination with them."


_Second part is set during DMC, right after Will and Elizabeth's talk on the Pearl._

_Disclaimer: I don't own Pirates of the Caribbean, I don't own the characters, I make no profit with this, not infringement intended._

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Beyond the Edge

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Meeting a real pirate does nothing to ease Elizabeth's fascination with them.

She wasn't so lost in her fantasies in the first place; in truth, Will was always more receptacle to them, with his dark, ever unspoken doubts about his origins hidden deep, deep within his heart beneath a furious, fearful, steely hatred for pirates, and his well-honed swordfighting skills he should never have needed in the protected town of Port Royal; Will who turns with such ease to the solution of ensuring a pirate's help and stealing a ship from the Navy...

Elizabeth, whatever her father and her despairing tutors might think, can well distinguish between stories and the reality; she has both feet firmly on the ground, for all her dreaming, and has no desire to pitch her sweet – if not always quite innocent – childhood fantasies against the reality; even less when Will can be both for her.

It turns out that she doesn't have a choice.

And she finds that while it was easy to accept that pirates are not quite as dashing and wonderful as in her favourite stories, but brutal and dangerous, she's not quite as prepared for these characters of fiction – some heroizing, some vilifying – to be human. Even Barbossa is a shock in this regard, cold and evil and affable, longing desperately for a taste of fruit.

And then Captain Jack Sparrow, hero of so many of her favourite tales, brilliant and constantly on the edge of disaster, it would seem, left stars in her eyes like the stories used to, only different. Not the Jack Sparrow who saved and then threatened her life all within a few minutes; but vulnerable and a little insane (just when she'd come to the conclusion that it's all an act), with foul breath and bad teeth and a very mundane story of pure luck behind his amazing escape that still leaves him talented enough to barter for a passage on a ship empty-handed and with three days worth of stolen rum in his belly. If she'd given up hope, that night on the island, if she hadn't been focused on her plan to escape, she doesn't know what she would have done...

* * *

But that's a lie, of course, she thinks, irritated, as she quickly runs up the stairs back to the deck, leaving Will behind alone. She knows exactly what she would have done. If it weren't for the fact Will would have been dead if they'd come later, she would regret that she hadn't been given at least one full day, at least one night believing she would die on this island with this man.

What she just told Will is nothing but the truth: he cannot trust her. Maybe she was more fooled by the fantasy than she thought, because in truth, the cruelty of piracy was never what frightened her: as a child, too young to truly comprehend it, she had revelled in it. What had been a shock was the harshness of it, the constant danger of death and just how focused it was, at every moment, on survival; the ruthlessness, subtly different from the brutality in the stories, that was the consequence. Jack, whom she still thinks a good man, was ready to betray her and Will to escape Davy Jones' clutches, and she can hardly blame him, after what she herself has done; and that alone earned her the title "pirate" from his mouth.

No, Will has no reason to trust her. She would do it all again, if that is what it takes to keep them safe, and bear the burden alone as long as she can.

"How is it?" a familiar voice jolts her from her thoughts, and she turns around to see Jack coming towards her. "Can I go down there and see if there's any rum left or is the whelp going to run me through for disturbing his brooding?" He stops right in front of her, hanging his weight from a stray rope whose exact purpose Elizabeth can't figure out at the moment.

"I think he'd rather be alone right now," she says, looking away, ignoring the way Jack, balancing back and forth, comes very close to her with every movement.

Jack observes her for a moment, with a sneer on his lips, before suddenly his face lights up.

"You want me to marry you? To Will," he clarifies hastily, holding up his free hand as if in defence.

"What?"

"You're here –" Jack gestures at her "– he's here. A captain's here." He strikes a pause and smiles winningly. Elizabeth frowns.

"Is this about scoring a point off Barbossa?"

"What does the reason matter to you?" Jack asks, unperturbed, and the sneer is back. "Yes or no?"

She looks away again and shakes her head.

"Thank you, Jack," she says, without much feeling. "But now isn't a good time."

"Ah." He peers at her curiously, with more insistence than is strictly comfortable, searchingly; she forces herself to meet his gaze.

"Jack," she says, slowly; she never expected the disaccord with him to be as painful, they've never been in synchrony the way she was with Will in the first place; she senses that he's not angry at her, he understands – but neither does he forgive her. "I –" It seems so easy then, so natural, in this place between the worlds, to lean forward to meet his lips; she needs this now, even if she's not sure herself what "this" is – maybe just this moment of closeness, to someone she can love without holding their heart in her hands, someone who's seen her at her worst...

But Jack pushes her back before she can close the space between them, not without gentleness, but firmly.

"Once was quite enough," he says.

She leans back and takes a deep breath.

"Of course," she says, and does her best to recollect herself; Jack looks at her with concern. "Forget it," she adds.

"I wish I could," he says, balancing back and forth; Elizabeth can't figure out if it's a compliment or a reproach, or maybe both, so she just smiles wanly and nods.

"I don't think there's any rum left in there," she says, pointing back down to the room where she left Will.

Jack makes a face, lets go of the rope, and pushes her aside to walk past her anyway.

"Typical," he mutters to himself, before disappearing inside.

She smiles weakly again, and represses another sigh; this she has lost for good, and maybe Will as well, but – now isn't the time. They might get lost still, all of them, in this empty ghost-ocean, and then it will no longer matter. No sense in worrying about it now.

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_AN: Comments are always greatly appreciated (even more so as I'm pretty new to the fandom)._


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